Smurfs

The Smurfs was a 1958 Belgian creation, a comic book (Les Schtroumpfs) for a nation that possibly needs a big sense of humour in order to contemplate itself. Their world of teeny blue comic creatures, featured in an animated series on US TV from 1981 to 1990, was finally licensed for a big-budget (Sony Animations) Hollywood production. Issued in 2011, scorned by the critics, it scooped up half-a-billion US dollars globally at the box office. The sequel, quickly green-lighted, will appear in 2013.

By then, a new generation of 6-10-year-olds (the cute, coy and cuddly creatures' natural market) will be ready to drag their parents off to premium-priced 3D cinema seats for depressingly derivative CGI-figure-populated live-action farce. By then, Neil Patrick Harris, a TV sitcom and Broadway stage star, may regret having accepted the lead human role, even if his bank account is healthier. The producers will have decided whether huge-nosed shaved-head Hank Azaria should be allowed to reappear (with his CGI-manipulated ginger tom accomplice) and again overact madly (as any other self-respecting comic actor would do to keep his sanity in such a film).

Director Raja Gosnell was already a known talent for his pedestrian (and occasionally commercially successful) directorial efforts on seven other comic efforts: Home Alone 3, Drew Barrymore's Never Been Kissed and Beverly Hills Chihauhua, Martin Lawrence's Big Momma's House, two Scooby Doos, and Dennis Quaid's Yours, Mine and Ours.

This time too, he didn't have much to work with. The lookalike bug-eyed pug-nosed Smurf characters have one-note traits revealed by their names (a la 7 Dwarfs), their world is threatened by an evil wizard (a la Tolkien etc), they have a portal to NYC (a la Enchanted), and the self-proclaimed screenplay-writers shall be nameless: a few wordplays winked in the direction of parents don't justify paying dutiful attention to the petty plot and trite dialogue.

Kids loved it, Drew must love Raja, and that's Hollywood reality.